Last week I posted this excellent essay by Professor Kontorovich of Northwestern Law arguing that the anti-piracy efforts are unlikely to succeed as currently constituted. One problem I've noted is that there is no obvious place to try captured pirates from Somalia. The U.S. Navy's plan is to try pirates in nearby Kenya. As this WSJ article suggests, this strategy is...
In an effort to placate critics of the U.S. Congress's stimulus package, the final revised version apparently has toned down the earlier House of Representatives proposal requiring recipients of stimulus money to "Buy American" iron and steel only. Here is the additional provision added by the Senate, and I believe it survived the final version(all emphasis is added by me): SEC. 1604....
The ICC has formally approved the ICC Prosecutor's request for an arrest warrant against Sudan's President. Kevin's post below discusses what the theory of criminal liability will be, although the actual warrant is not yet public, so we'll have to wait to see if Kevin is right about joint criminal enterprise liability. I still think that this arrest warrant is unwise and...
Typically, I wouldn't take this kind of thing very seriously. The Palestinian Authority is pressing the International Criminal Court in The Hague to investigate accusations of war crimes committed by Israeli commanders during the recent war in Gaza. But in a clever move, the Palestinian Authority has accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC over its territory, which includes Gaza. This could in...
I'm not at all surprised by this. Barack Obama's justice department has repeated a Bush administration policy of citing "state secrets" to prevent the release of evidence concerning extraordinary renditions. The decision, revealed at a hearing in a San Francisco appeals court, came days after the British high court ruled that evidence of renditions and torture must remain secret so as not to endanger the intelligence...
Sometimes reporters and their editors get caught up in a narrative, and forget to check facts. In the case of Obama and Bush, every Obama pronouncement is presumed to represent a reversal of Bush policy. But this is simply not true (see, e.g., the predictable and apparently uncontroversial Obama retention of Bush policies on "extraordinary rendition" and airstrikes in Pakistan). And so it...
OK, it only violates international trade law obligations, but that's not nothing! Specifically, the stimulus package recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives contains a number of "buy American" requirements for the purchase of steel by recipients of the stimulus. The EU is already getting set to challenge these provisions at the WTO, if they make it into U.S....
I'm not familiar with these things, but it strikes me as a bit odd that the Obama Administration is leaking draft versions of its executive order on Guantanamo. Just release it, already! You are the President now! In any event, the draft order does take a fairly hard line on closing Gitmo, but it leaves itself plenty of wiggle room. ...
One other added benefit of the upcoming Obama years (and there are likely to be few) is the end of the dishonest or at least inaccurate charges about the radical nature of the Bush Administration's views on executive powers. The most annoying one that I've heard a million times from Keith Olbermann but also from otherwise intelligent and respectable constitutional...
I admit I am not exactly looking forward to the Obama years. Still, it did warm my heart a bit to hear the new U.S. commander-in-chief endorse the continuation of the war on terrorism in his inaugural speech yesterday. That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network...
According to the Guardian, the ICJ may soon have a chance to opine on the numerous legal issues arising out of the current Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. The UN general assembly, which is meeting this week to discuss the issue, will consider requesting an advisory opinion from the international court of justice, the Guardian has learned. "There is a well-grounded view...
So this video is obviously intended to defend the actions of the Israeli Defense Forces during their action in Gaza. But it is fascinating in terms of its footage of precise IDF bombings, and its provision by provision discussion of certain relevant provisions of the Geneva Conventions. Obviously, it is a piece of advocacy, but it is effective. Anyone have a...
